The genocidal attacks by the Israeli state against the Lebanese people and the Hezbollah organisation require a deeper analysis of this important group.
By Fábio Bosco
Hezbollah is the main bourgeois political party in Lebanon today, with an extensive social welfare network, a militia that is the main military force in the country (larger than even the national army) and solid relations with the Iranian regime.
Its origins lie in 1982, in the midst of the civil war and the invasion of Lebanon by Israeli troops, in the convergence of the political awakening of the Lebanese Shiite community after the Naksa (1967) and the Iranian revolution of 1979.
Two other major historical events shaped Hezbollah: the neoliberal policies of the Lebanese post-civil war (1975-1990) and the intervention in the Syrian revolution (2011-2016).
The Shiite Awakening
Socially and politically marginalised since the country’s independence and the 1943 National Pact, the Shiite community underwent a political awakening after the Naksa – the defeat of the Arab countries that fought Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War. The pan-Arabist (Nasserism, Baathism), Marxist (LCP and others) Palestinian organisations gained much influence among the poorest sectors of the Shi’ite community in southern Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley, to the detriment of the traditional Za’im landowners, the most famous of whom was Kamil As’ad.
In order to combat the growing influence of pan-Arabism and socialism, the Lebanese bourgeoisie, through the state, supported the political and religious leader Musa al-Sadr, who, together with the speaker of parliament Hussein al-Husseini, founded the Mahrumin (‘Dispossessed’) movement and its armed wing, AMAL, in 1974. He appealed to the poorer sections of the Shia community by combining religion, social justice and anti-communism.
After the “disappearance” of Musa al-Sadr in Libya in 1978 (attributed to the dictator Muammar Gaddafi), the movement established political and financial links with the Syrian regime, which had occupied Lebanon since 1976.
In 1982, the winds of the Iranian revolution caused a split in AMAL, giving rise to the Party of God – Hezbollah. Its political discourse was also directed towards the impoverished Shiite community and its popularity grew through the creation of a large network of social aid, as well as its military actions against the U.S. and French troops running the country in 1983, and the actions against the Israeli occupation.
In this historical moment, the communist organisations led the Lebanese resistance that managed to expel the Israeli troops from the capital and thus increased their influence among the Lebanese people, especially among the Shiite workers and peasants.
Hezbollah’s first programme
The “Open Letter to the Oppressed of Lebanon and the World” (Mustadafin in Arabic) of 16 February 1985 presented positions that were strongly anti-imperialist, anti-Zionist and against the Lebanese extreme right represented by the Phalanges. In the letter, the strategy was to expel the United States, France and Israel from Lebanese soil and to bring the Lebanese Phalangists to justice.
Moreover, they declared as allies all the oppressed people in the world, as well as organisations and individuals who were fighting against the same enemies and had no plans to attack Hezbollah. It also announced to the poor Muslims and Christians of Lebanon that although Hezbollah defends a system of Islamic government, it accepts the democratic sovereign decision of the Lebanese people on the system of government.
The declaration of friendship with other anti-imperialist organisations did not last long. From 1987 onwards, Hezbollah began to fight for the hegemony of the Shiite community by all means against the communists and AMAL. Madhi Amel, the most important Lebanese Marxist intellectual, was assassinated during this period. In the end, the communist organisations were persecuted and marginalised. This anti-communist offensive was also used by the Iranian regime to destroy the influence of different socialist organisations in the Iranian revolution, such as the Tudeh, the People’s Fedaian, the People’s Mujahedin and the Kurdish groups. In 1989, Ayatollah Khomeini ordered the summary trial of some 3,000 arrested communists. AMAL, weakened, survived thanks to an agreement between the Syrian and Iranian regimes.
Hezbollah, on the other hand, stuck to the compromise of not imposing an Islamic system of government against the will of the people, fully adhering to the sectarian regime and seeking, as already described, a broad hegemony among the Shiites and an alliance with the Christian, Sunni and Druze sectors.
The end of the civil war and the neo-liberal reconstruction of the country
The Taif Accord of 1989 sealed a deal between the main factions of the Lebanese elite to end the civil war. It divided power equally between the Christian and Muslim forces in parliament and transferred the powers of the presidency to the prime minister’s cabinet. This redistribution of power was particularly beneficial to the Sunni and Shia bourgeoisies.
The reconstruction of the country, devastated by 15 years of civil war, was based on neo-liberal policies such as attracting foreign capital, real estate speculation, privatisation and other free market policies that increased inequality and social exclusion.
At this point, Hezbollah, already the main Shi’ite political party, expanded its social base towards the Shi’ite bourgeoisie (especially those involved in trading activities in Africa) and the Shi’ite middle class, which began to emerge through a greater share of government contracts and reconstruction funds.
Its sources of funding have since diversified. Hezbollah receives money not only from the Iranian regime, but also from the Shia bourgeois and middle classes, and from businesses set up by the party itself in areas such as supermarkets, shops, petrol stations, restaurants, travel agencies and construction companies.
Slowly, a profound change is taking place in the social base and composition of Hezbollah’s leadership, from a party of the poorer strata of the Shia community, led by Shia clerics, to the Shia bourgeoisie, with a growing presence of new cadres educated in the country’s elite universities. At the same time, southern Lebanon is no longer the poorest region of the country, being replaced by the north, around Tripoli and Akkar, where the largest community is Sunni. In Dahieh, impoverished Shiite sectors live side by side with a wealthy Shiite middle class and its luxury cars.
The tilt towards the interests of the Shia bourgeoisie can be seen in Hezbollah’s intervention in the workers’ movement. The CGTL (General Confederation of Lebanese Workers) played an important role before the civil war in overcoming religious divisions and uniting the workers around their class interests. Hezbollah worked against this class-oriented direction and formed unions and associations on a sectarian basis, trying to divide the Lebanese working class and subordinate the interests of the Shiite workers to the Shiite bourgeoisie.
Military support for the Syrian dictatorship and declining popular support
In March 2011, the Syrian working class rose up against the dictatorship of the Assad dynasty as part of a wave of revolutions that swept the MENA countries. The strength of the revolution shattered the dictatorship’s support and split the armed forces. To avoid being overthrown, the Syrian regime called on the support of militias linked to the Iranian regime, including Hezbollah.
These militias have been involved in many massacres against the Syrian people. Hezbollah, previously admired for its struggle against Israel, began to be rejected by the Syrians. In Lebanon, a great questioning of Hezbollah’s participation in the Syrian conflict began, since the maintenance of the militias was always justified by the struggle against the state of Israel, and not by the killing of Arab brothers and sisters. Even more disappointed were the families of the thousands of Hezbollah fighters killed in Syria.
The enormous political discredit caused by the intervention in Syria was even greater than that caused by previous events, such as the 2005 Lebanese uprising against the presence of Syrian troops in the country – an uprising that Hezbollah opposed. The discrediting of 2005 was partly offset by the Israeli invasion of 2006, in which Hezbollah regained huge popular support.
Hezbollah then acted against the “October Revolution” of 2019, a popular uprising against the deterioration of living standards and the sectarian regime. Its participation in the repression of the movement consolidated its discredit among the population in general, even if it retains majority support among the Shia community, one of the largest in the country (between 31% and 39% of Lebanese are Shia).
Neither terrorist nor revolutionary
Hezbollah is not a terrorist organisation as Israel and the Western imperialist countries say. Nor is it a revolutionary organisation. It is a bourgeois political party deeply rooted in the confessional regime of Lebanon and the main representative of the Shiite community, among which it has practically built a Shiite sub-state within the Lebanese state.
It is not correct to say that Hezbollah is simply an arm of Iran in Lebanon. It is a Lebanese political party linked to the interests of the Shiite Lebanese bourgeoisie and also a great ally of the Iranian regime.
The Lebanese working class faces many challenges on the national, regional and international level. The struggle against the neo-liberal policies that have led to the impoverishment of the working class and the struggle for the end of the Lebanese sectarian regime are strategic and will confront the interests of Hezbollah and all other bourgeois political parties in Lebanon.
In this region, the challenge for the Lebanese working class is to unite with the Palestinian, Syrian and other working classes of all Arab countries against the state of Israel and the Arab regimes. In the struggle against Israel, the working class must act together with all the forces that take part in the anti-Zionist struggle, including Hezbollah, always keeping its own independent organisation. In the struggle against the Arab regimes, the working class will find no allies among the bourgeois parties.
Internationally, the working class will have to fight against the imperialist domination, be it the Western, US/European imperialism or the new Russian or Chinese imperialism.
On the path of struggle for the end of imperialist domination and the liberation of Palestine, the working class must organise itself independently of all bourgeois parties, including Hezbollah, to fight for the power of the working class of each country, towards a socialist federation of Arab countries.
